


The Sky's the Limit

by Polyhexian



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alt-mode based body dysmorphia, Bad Ending Timeline, Established Relationship, I watched YouTube tutorials on how to fly a jet because those exist, M/M, POV Second Person, Post canon, alt mode stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:27:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26121166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polyhexian/pseuds/Polyhexian
Summary: Rewind wants Brainstorm to teach him how to fly.
Relationships: Brainstorm/Chromedome/Rewind (Transformers), Brainstorm/Rewind (Transformers)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 30





	The Sky's the Limit

"No, no, I've done the sims!" Rewind laughs, "I wanna do it for real!"

You eye him warily, suspiciously. 

"Are you sure?" you ask, "I mean, it's kind of weird, isn't it?" 

"I don't think so!" Rewind shakes his head, enthusiastic like you've never seen him before, visor glittering with excitement, "Domey taught me to drive!" 

Your optics flicker over to Chromedome and he looks up from his datapad and nods.

"Don't listen to him," Chromedome says, "It's definitely kind of weird, but it's not bad weird. He just wants to pretend he has an engine for a little while."

"It's not _weird!_ " Rewind groans, "Come on, targetmaster training used to run _standard_ in the Aerial Corps, and you give me rides all the _time_!" 

"Well, yeah, but I'm _driving_ ," you scoff, "It's different if _you're_ driving!"

"Piloting," he corrects you, "I'm already an excellent driver. I drove Ultra Magnus once, you know."

"Yeah, Whirl told me about it," you admit, "He said it was weird." 

"What, you're taking Whirl's opinion to spark now?" Rewind snorts with a roll of his optical display. He makes grabby hands for your wings and you spin your chair a bit so he can reach better, sitting cross-legged on the desk. You shiver, embarrassed, as he runs his palm up a twitching, anxious aileron, flaps tilting into the touch. "You don't have to. But it would be fun! I think it would be fun."

You chew your lip beneath your faceplate, considering. It's weird. It's definitely weird. But weird isn't _bad_. A lot of things are _weird_ , like, dating your best friend and his husband is _weird_ , but this is probably the happiest you've ever been in your life, so definitely not _bad_. 

"Okay," you say, finally, "I guess it's fine, it's not like you can hurt anything… it's just kind of weird."

"Eee!" Rewind squeals, and pushes your wing back so your chair spins and you face him. He throws himself into your lap and butts his head up into your neck happily. "It won't be weird! It'll be fun, I promise! We'll have fun, Stormy."

"You'll have fun until he runs you into a tree," Chromedome snorts without looking up.

"That was _one time_!" Rewind snaps, adorably affronted, and even your anxiety can't overwhelm the burst of affection in your chest, radiating out from your spark.

* * *

"Do you need help?" you ask. 

"No, no, I've got it!" Rewind has both arms hooked over one wing as he tries to heave himself up with upper body strength alone. Just sitting in your alt-mode already makes you a little uncomfortable.

You don't use your alt-mode much. Its ultimately pretty useless to you as a scientist who's lived most of your life on space stations, but you're living on New Cybertron now and there's lots of open air and everything is kind of far away, so if you want to go into town you really do have to fly. It's not even like you actively dislike flying or anything- you just like walking more, but it's just not practical. 

Sometimes you think about rescanning, but big mode changes are a pretty big deal and you'd definitely need a proper mechanic and they'd definitely be able to tell by your protoform blueprints and configuration schematics that you're an MTO, since it's an off the shelf design. You've only just started being honest about that with people and even still you don't like people you don't know really well knowing that. You can't think of an alt-mode you'd _rather_ have, either. You just wish maybe you were a little more comfortable with the one you're in.

"Got it!" Rewind announces, standing up and swinging a leg over the side of your cockpit as he climbs in. You check the sky again. It's a nice day for flying, clear skies and gentle weather without any wind, and the rolling plains of the Zirconium Plateau are the perfect place for learning to fly (and learning to crash).

"Alright," you say, as he situates himself in the seat. You drop the cockpit down and seal it shut, and try not to feel more embarrassed than you need to at the feeling of his optics pouring over all your instruments and displays, "Well, first things first. Buckle up for safety, and all that."

"Right!" Rewind turns in the seat and grabs the harness to lock in, tiny hands gentle as he pulls the strap tight and adjusts the fit, tugging it taught.

"Okay, fresh start. You've done the sims, right? You know what to do?"

"I think so, but the sims run with non-sentient models, so I'm sure there's some differences- talk me through it! It's _your_ alt-mode, you know it best."

"I suppose," you say, dubiously. Rewind is running his hands along the middle LCD display, fingers tracing the bevelled edges and running along the unmarked buttons. 

"Wow," he says, reverently, "Three screens."

"Uh, yeah," you answer, and click them on, cycling the displays to something you think might be useful, setting the synthetic ground mapping radar to the center display, targeting to the left and navigation to the right. "You can shuffle it around to whatever works best for you, and you can flip through secondary readouts too. Full colour."

"Wow," he sighs, "That's _really_ nice. The sims are the old vector style displays, are these raster?"

"They're raster," you confirm. In your root mode the center display aligns with your forearm so you can use it as a computer when you need it. 

"That's awesome," says Rewind, "You're awesome." 

You feel immediately and bizarrely bashful at the compliment. It's not really directed at _you_ but at the body you live in, one you didn't even build, so it's not something you have any business being proud of- you didn't make it, you didn't design it, you didn't even grow it, it's just the body you happen to have, so. You aren't used to it being complimented, either, and you feel guilty for enjoying it.

"I didn't design it," you remind him, in case he's forgotten, "That's just how it is."

"Yeah, but it's _you_ ," he says, like that means something, "it must be amazing to have instruments like this built into your actual body! You can just turn them on and control them- you've got so many instruments and you have to operate them all at once! I'm jealous."

"It's really not that impressive," you assert. He hums, idly, becoming distracted again by more equipment, optics tracking back and forth as he memorizes toggle layouts, button locations, minor readouts along the sidewalls. 

"Alright, so, let's start with that pre-flight checklist!" Rewind starts rubbing his hands together, leaning back and away from the dashboard, "Parking break?"

"Engaged."

"Master arm?"

"Safe."

"Batt switch?"

"On."

"Break pressure?" 

"3000 pounds."

"Aaaaalrighty," says Rewind, leaning forward to flip a toggle, "Let's fire and bleed air through channel A, cycle the battery and then channel B."

"Ooh, thorough," you comment, noting the feeling of life in your engine as your turbines roll to activity.

"No crashing today!" Rewind singsongs, and then moves his hand to another panel, "APU on." 

"Do you want to taxi a bit before you actually try to take off? Make sure you've got the hang of it?"

"If you _want_ ," Rewind laughs, and reaches up to pat your dashboard beneath the HUD consolingly. It feels oddly intimate even though there's no reason it should and that sends another jolt of embarrassment through your frame that you're careful to bottle up and hide immediately. 

"Alright, keep one hand on the joystick- but keep your other hand off, that one has to stay free to work the monitors and you don't want to button mash," you tell him, and he hums as he follows along, double checking the engine readouts before he pushes you forward into a taxi. "Congrats," you say, "You're driving a plane." 

"I'm driving a plane!" he repeats, delighted. His joy is infectious, and it feels like you might melt in the glow of it. 

"So how does it feel, then? What you wanted?" you tease.

"Yes!" he responds immediately, "I can't imagine having control over this much _power_ in my actual body. You must feel incredible all the time knowing you can just- _nyoom_ whenever you want!"

Rewind's alt-function performs virtually the same whether he's in his root mode or his alt; his brain directly accesses his storage space so it's not like he has to transform to use it. He doesn't use his alt-mode much, but you've never heard him complain about it. For all your discomfort with your alt-mode you can't imagine not having an engine or at least _some_ kind of transport alt to fall back on. He runs colder than you or Chromedome, and quieter, too. It's a little unsettling sometimes, especially when he's in recharge, filling you with the bizarre inclination to shake him and make sure he's still alive. Maybe it's not actually that weird that he wants to learn to drive. 

"I don't fly much," you remind him, "I never really have."

"How come?" 

"That's not what I do," you say, suddenly uncomfortable, "I'm not one for the field. You know that."

"Well, yeah," he nods, "But not even for fun?"

You don't answer for a moment, not sure how to, and he seems to notice your sudden change of mood.

"Hey, if you don't wanna talk about it, that's okay," he says, and that puts a pit in your fuel tank. Things have been different since the Lost Light was decommissioned, since the time travel incident. Since Rewind died. You've been different. People knowing your history makes you feel horrifically exposed all the time, unprotected, unarmored. 

You have two partners that love you, though, and they tell you often enough. There's a disconcerting valley between the person you are and the person you want to be, and you know that means leaving your comfort zone to cross the tightrope over the gap, trusting that they'll catch you if you fall.

"I don't want to be good at it," you admit, "I never have. If I was good at it people would make me do it more and that's not what I wanted to spend my life doing."

He's quiet, watching the ground through the windshield, pensive, before he speaks. "I understand." He's quiet again and then he shifts and pulls you to a stop. "Do you wanna go home?"

"Hm?"

"I mean, I'm sorry if I pushed you too hard," he says, and sets a hand on your dash again, gentle, palm running along the edge, "I didn't realize I was asking so much of you. I just thought it would be fun to do together."

You feel kind of guilty that you've made him feel bad, now. You hadn't wanted to.

"No, it's fine, I-"

"Stormy," he cuts you off, "You don't have to do anything that makes you uncomfortable. You don't have to impress me. It's okay." 

You're at a momentary loss of words, unusual for you to say the least. It's not a position you're accustomed to finding yourself in. Part of you is yelling not to put much stock in that, to never forget how _much_ you have to impress people if you want to be kept around, but you know better than to put much stock into that part of you. 

"No, it'll be fun," you say, eventually, " _You're_ the one flying, I'm just the engine."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Come on, takeoff is the fun part."

His visor brightens again and he sits back, one hand on the joystick and the other along the side panel, rubbing his thumb beneath the lip of the windshield. 

With absolutely devious glee he leans forward on the joystick and clocks the speed up as high as he can on the ground before pulling your nosecone up and into the air. You can reach almost Mach 2 if you push yourself and you really hope he's actually prepared for that kind of force, because you didn't really ask but it's not like you can't just take control of he passes out, but still.

You think he yells something but it gets lost in the din of things and you ping him a nudge for subsonics. 

"Primus!" he giggles manically over internal comms, "Domey has the dopiest little engine, he can barely break a hundred as his top speed, this is something else."

"If I puttered about at that speed I'd fall right out of the sky," you scoff, "Though, that does make it pretty impractical for travelling any short distances, as you know."

"I know!" he says, tilting one wing to the side as he peers over the edge of the windshield to the left, down at the rapidly shrinking ground below, "Amazing, though."

"Hardly," you downplay, "Cyclonus can _double_ my top speed."

"What _is_ your top speed?" he inquires, pulling his optics away from the ground again to the navigation displays on the dash, "two thousand kilometers an hour?"

"Twenty-two hundred, more like," you correct, "I can't get to mach 2, but I can get close."

"Amazing," he says, for the millionth time, and then shifts his focus, tilting his head curiously to the side, "You're beautiful, you know."

It comes so out of left field that it catches you off guard and you make a strangled static hiccup of surprise before you catch yourself. "Uh," you say, uncertainly, "Thanks. I guess." 

"You are! You should know that," he asserts, his voice very firm, "Smart _and_ beautiful. The whole package."

 _That_ sends something straight through to your spark you weren't expecting or prepared for and you make another humiliating garbled sound he's too kind to laugh at. 

"I'd prefer to just be smart," you say, stupidly, that barely even makes sense, but he seems undeterred and tilts your nosecone up again, pulling up even higher. 

"Then it's a good thing you don't have to choose, huh? You're the smartest mech I know, _and_ a beautiful jet, and the two are not mutually exclusive," he says with a pleased little nod. 

"W-well," you stammer, trying to think up some kind of intellectual response, "That's-"

"And I love you," he cuts you off again, and brings whatever thought you were trying to form to a halt, "Shape and spark." 

"I love you, too," you say, the words automatic but still new enough to you to make your spark ache with them, "But really, I'm not-"

You cut yourself off with a startled yelp as he throws you into an unexpected barrel roll.

"What was that?" Rewind asks innocently as you level out again, "What were you going to say about yourself?"

"I am not so lacking in self esteem that you need to fib to me to feed my ego," you say proudly, stubbornly, "and I don't ne-"

He pulls you into another barrel roll. 

"Don't call me a liar," he says primly as he evens out again. He certainly wasn't lying about clocking in those sim hours. 

"Fine," you sputter, "I am a pretty jet! Are you happy?"

He doesn't need a mouth for you to know he's smiling. "Yeah," he says, the word blooming with affection that you can't believe is for you, given and accepted, and at some point around the fifth barrel roll you realize, quite easily, you _are_ having fun.


End file.
